Corky (Tony Hopkins) would be one of the best magicians in the
world if his rating were to be based entirely on technical skills.
Unfortunately, he is a timid man, entirely devoid of showmanship.
His meek personality is totally unsuited to the early stages of a
career in show business - the part where a newcomer works in
clubs, competing for the attention of a half-soused crowd.

He comes upon a solution. He alters his act from a pure magic
show to a combination of magic and ventriloquism. This shift
allows him to use the dummy to do the things he cannot do - the
raunchy patter and insult humor which are necessary to interact
with a club crowd. The dummy named "Fats" is assigned to do all
the offensive material, while Corky stays in character simply as
Corky, the shy and soft-spoken guy who is more offended than
anyone by his partner's shenanigans. The problem which develops
is that his offstage
personality bifurcates as dramatically as seen onstage, and he
becomes utterly dependent on Fats to have a conversation with
anyone. The mental illness gradually becomes worse until he is
having long conversations with Fats in which he seems to think
there is another person in the room. When his secret is finally
uncovered by his agent (Burgess Meredith, again playing Mickie
from Rocky, except that his lines say "Cork" instead of "Rock"),
he deteriorates so completely that the Corky side of his
personality is following orders from Fats to commit murder.

As of this morning, I hadn't seen this film since it was
released in 1978, when I was in my (gasp!) twenties. Its
reputation stays completely under the radar, and you rarely hear
anyone mention it, but as I popped it in the DVD player, I was
thinking "Jeez, back then I thought this was a good movie, and my
friends thought so too." Well, guess what? It IS a good movie.
Unlike so many other fondly-remembered films from the 70s which
now seem like complete crap when separated from the pervasive 70s
mindset, Magic is not defined by its pandering to rebellious 70s
counter-culturism, its parading of laughably dated but then-hip
70s fashions, nor its gimmicky cinema verite
filmmaking. This movie could be re-released today and it would
seem to have been made now and would still seem to be taking place
in the present, except for the presence of actors now dead or much
older, and/or a few minor references like "I saw you on Carson."

It was directed with elegance and the right attention to
dramatic tension, which is a bit surprising in light of the fact
that the director was Richard Attenborough, who was best known for
stodgy big-cast films like Gandhi and A Bridge Too Far. (By
the way, I am writing this in 2006, and Attenborough has a new
film in the pipeline!) The film is a Hitchcock clone, and a good
one. Imagine the relationship between shy, sensitive Norman Bates
and his mother, and you'll have a very good mental picture of the
relationship between Corky and Fats. As in a typical Hitchcock
film, there is no supernatural component to the mystery, and
everything can be explained by events which are really possible in
the natural universe. Fats is not an evil figure like Chuckie, but
simply a hunk of wood that is injected with an imagined
personality by its owner. The audience is easily able to relate to
Fats as a real character in the film, and not simply an inert
object in the shadows like Mama Bates. Give credit to Tony
Hopkins, who actually provided the voice for Fats; to the real
puppeteer, who controlled the dummy; and to director Attenborough,
who found many spooky ways to insert the dummy into the scenes.

Besides the remarkable character of Fats, the element which really makes the
film work is Attenborough's ability to create nail-biting tension
in various scenes. Corky buries his first murder victim at the
bottom of a small lake. The next day he is obligated to go fishing
in that lake, and his partner seems to be dragging in something of
great magnitude ... a human body, perhaps? Similar situations
arise throughout the second half of the movie, as Corky is forced
to improvise various explanations in order to cover up the trail
left by his sloppy, impulsive murder. Why is there a Rolls Royce
parked just outside of a humble country lodge? What is the story
behind the mysterious dead body that just washed up nearby? Why is
there fresh blood on some of Corky's possessions? In each case,
Corky must relieve the dramatic tension by improvising a
satisfactory explanation or by committing additional crimes. Each
stressful situation drives Corky further into madness, until ... ?

Despite all my praise for Attenborough's work here, I have to
say that he made one very glaring error. There is one scene where
Fats rolls his eyes while Hopkins is elsewhere, having just walked
away from the couch. The flub occurred because the man
manipulating Fats was behind the couch and could not determine precisely when Hopkins
walked away. Should be no big deal. Catch it in dailies and re-shoot
the scene, right? Wrong. Although Attenborough was informed of the
mistake by several people, including Dennis Alwood, the
ventriloquist who was operating the Fats figure and was
embarrassed by his mistake, Sir Richard refused to re-shoot and
left the scene in. Of course, it completely destroys the integrity
of the film, because it proves with irrefutable certainty that
Fats actually possessed an independent life, and was not just a
hunk of wood. It incorrectly injects a supernatural component into
a story which should have none, and thus it creates the
possibility that Corky is not really acting insane at all when he
talks to Fats, because Fats can live independent of Corky. Imagine
if Hitchcock had allowed Mother Bates to get up and walk around
while Norman was occupied elsewhere. For the sake of those of us
who like our mysteries tight, we simply have to pretend that we
are seeing the scene through Corky's eyes, and that he imagines
the eye movement by Fats.

Setting aside that persnickety quibble, Magic is one of the best Hitchcock films not actually directed
by Hitchcock.

Sidebar: William Goldman

The author of the source novel, as well as the screenplay, is
William Goldman, who has been responsible for as many excellent
movies as anyone in the second half of the twentieth century.
Magic is an excellent film, but Goldman has received a writing
credit on 17 better ones, per IMDb:

He won two Oscars (Butch Cassidy, All the President's Men) as
well as two Edgars for two completely different films (Magic,
Marathon Man). A fifth and sixth film (Misery, The Princess Bride)
were nominated for Saturns. The top three films above are ranked
in the all-time top 250 at IMDb. If ever a man deserved a lifetime
achievement award for the quality and quantity of his contribution
to cinema, it is Mr. Bill Goldman of Highland Park, Illinois.

Oh, yeah, one more plus about Magic. There is a romantic
sub-plot in which Corky returns to his home town to woo his
high school sweetheart. They go to bed together. We see her
breasts. The sweetheart is played by Ann-Margret.

... they're real ... and they're spectacular!

Bonus: You probably know that Ann-Margret also did a nude scene
in 1971's Carnal Knowledge, but you may not remember 1970's CC and
Company. You should, although not for the quality of the movie. CC
and Company starred no less distinguished a Royal Shakespearian
thespian than the legendary Sir Broadway Joseph William Namath,
making his film debut only a year after his unlikely but
pre-guaranteed triumph over the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.

DVD INFO

The widescreen transfer is anamorphically
enhanced, and is satisfactory

Many more worthwhile
features. Recommended. See below.

NUDITY REPORT

A mature Ann-Margret (37 years
old) shows an enormous bosom in her sex scene with Dr. Lecter.

DVD
notes

The DVD has one excellent feature, Fats and Friends, which is a
very long interview with the ventriloquist who manipulated the Fats
figure for this film (David Alwood). It is both his personal
reminiscences about the filming as well as his own version of the
history of ventriloquism in the electronic era. More than just a
talking head piece, it intercuts scenes from the movie, scenes from
other films, scenes of ventriloquists performing, and various memorabilia like movie posters and stills. This feature alone is worth the price of the
rental and, coupled with a solid transfer of the movie, makes this a
DVD worth owning.

Among the revelations in the
interview:

A completely different cast and crew was
supposed to make the film. Producer Joseph E Levine had asked the
legendary Edgar Bergen to do the ventriloquism consulting, but he
demurred and passed Levine on to David Alwood. At that time, the
director was slated to be Norman Jewison, the old agent was to be
played by the legendary Laurence Olivier, and the star was to be a
legend-in-waiting, Jack Nicholson. Olivier had to withdraw because of
ill health, but Nicholson withdrew from the project for a crazy reason
- he refused to wear a hairpiece that would make his hairline match
the dummy's!

There are other interesting features as well:

An interview with cinematographer Victor J.
Kemper

An interview with Tony Hopkins

Ann-Margret's make-up test

The
Critics Vote ...

The only major
review online is Vincent Canby's from the
N.Y.Times. He panned it. His review is worth reading
because he has a very different take from mine. Pretty much
the opposite in every way!

The Numbers. It
grossed $23 million, a moderate hit - in the top twenty in
1978.

The meaning of the IMDb
score: 7.5 usually indicates a level of
excellence equivalent to about three and a half stars
from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm
watchability, comparable to approximately two and a half stars
from the critics. The fives are generally not
worthwhile unless they are really your kind of
material, equivalent to about a two star rating from the critics,
or a C- from our system.
Films rated below five are generally awful even if you
like that kind of film - this score is roughly equivalent to one
and a half stars from the critics or a D on our scale. (Possibly even less,
depending on just how far below five the rating
is.

Our own
guideline:

A means the movie is so good it
will appeal to you even if you hate the genre.

B means the movie is not
good enough to win you over if you hate the
genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an
open mind about this type of film. Any film rated B- or better
is recommended for just about anyone. In order to rate at
least a B-, a film should be both a critical and commercial
success. Exceptions: (1) We will occasionally rate a film B- with
good popular acceptance and bad reviews, if we believe the
critics have severely underrated a film. (2) We may also
assign a B- or better to a well-reviewed film which did not do well at the
box office if we feel that the fault lay in the marketing of
the film, and that the film might have been a hit if people
had known about it. (Like, for example, The Waterdance.)

C+ means it has no crossover appeal, but
will be considered excellent by people who enjoy this kind of
movie. If this is your kind of movie, a C+ and an A are
indistinguishable to you.

C
means it is competent, but uninspired genre fare. People who
like this kind of movie will think it satisfactory. Others
probably will not.

C- indicates that it we found it to
be a poor movie, but genre addicts find it watchable. Any film
rated C- or better is recommended for fans of that type of
film, but films with this rating should be approached with
caution by mainstream audiences, who may find them incompetent
or repulsive or both. If this is NOT your kind of movie, a C-
and an E are indistinguishable to you.

D means you'll hate it even if you
like the genre. We don't score films below C- that
often, because we like movies and we think that most of them
have at least a solid niche audience. Now that you know that,
you should have serious reservations about any movie below C-.
Films rated below C- generally have both bad reviews and poor
popular acceptance.

E means that you'll hate it even if
you love the genre.

F means that the film is not only unappealing
across-the-board, but technically inept as well.

Based on this description, this
film is a C+, top-notch genre fare,
undeservedly forgotten by history.